Girl on Fire
by cloverhand
Summary: Faith and Tara fall in love and protest the Vietnam War, in New York City in 1971. Historical AU. This was written for Winter of Faith. Rated T for language.


Written for this year's Winter of Faith ficathon/community on Livejournal and for the space au: historical on my Trope Bingo card on Dreamwidth.

Five 200 word drabbles about Faith and Tara and the counterculture, in 1971 in New York City.

Disclaimer: I don't own Faith, Tara, or anything mentioned in this unofficial fanwork. Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy do.

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Tara is a runaway, just like Faith is, and she's come to New York to start over. Faith sees her in a shitty bar in Greenwich Village, dishwater blonde hair hiding her face and long-fingered hands drawing circles on the counter. She swings one leg rhythmically, swirling her long green skirt like water, and cocks her head to the side, listening to the jukebox play Joni Mitchell, and Faith decides she wants to know her.

Tara is a year older and three states farther away from home than Faith, she is kind and calm, she has a crooked smile, and she stutters when nervous. Tara likes girls and folk music and rainstorms, and she hates the war in Vietnam. She looks at Faith with wide blue eyes and Faith offers her the fold out couch in her crappy apartment.

So, they are acquaintances and roommates, then, after two weeks of sharing a bathroom and coffee, they are friends, and after three months of cautious kisses from Tara and bold innuendo from Faith, they are lovers.

They are runaways protesting a war that seems unending, but it's not a bad existence. They're together and they're happy, and that's all that matters.

* * *

Faith doesn't know if she's in love with Tara, but the thought of losing her cuts like the shards of a broken window pane.

Faith doesn't know much about being in love. She knows everything about being so angry that you feel like you'll explode and about hating so much that it burns in your guts, but in all the life she's lived in her nineteen years, love isn't any of the things she's learned about.

She thinks that she could be in love with Tara, because Tara makes her feel happier and funnier and nicer. When she's with Tara, she doesn't have to pretend that she's brave and fearless, because Tara makes her believe that she is. Tara smiles at Faith when she wakes up, brings her wildflowers when she's upset, listens when she shouts about just how fucked up this country is, and tells Faith that she cares. She smiles when she kisses Faith and holds her hand when they protest outside of the draft office.

Tara makes Faith smile before she falls asleep and makes her feel like singing when she's awake. Tara makes Faith feel like she's in love, and so Faith decides that she is.

* * *

Tara likes to read. Faith doesn't. She likes stories and she likes it when Tara reads aloud from _The Fellowship of the Ring_ or _On the Road_, but she's not much for reading herself. Faith hates staying still, hates holding herself in place for hours at a time, with only the solemn flipping of pages to punctuate the stillness. It drives her crazy and she gets unbearably restless, like the lions in zoo cages that her sister had taken her to see once, when she was very young.

There isn't very much that she and Tara have in common, really. Tara is quiet and thoughtful where Faith is loud and blunt and explosive. Faith is angry and violent, where Tara is a pacifist to the bones. Tara is polite when Faith doesn't care, and Faith is direct when Tara is shy. They are opposites, left and right, light and dark. Yin and Yang, Faith thinks, and maybe they're not completely different, because that's something Tara taught her, just like Faith taught Tara to sing loud enough so that everyone would hear and to feel her anger instead of hiding it away.

They're almost nothing alike, but maybe that's the point.

* * *

Faith Lehane is something of a rebel. She's the darker side of the counterculture, too violent and angry for even America's tribe of outcasts. She's the cursing, pot smoking, unpatriotic terror in leather and denim, who haunts the nightmares of suburban moms and pops. She's a radical revolutionary, ready to do what it takes to end the war in Vietnam. Faith has found the mission and she's going to fight until she's dead or until she wins. Whichever comes first.

It worries Tara, she knows. Tara's a love-not-war type of girl, but her sign waving and Be-Ins aren't going to do a damn thing to stop the war. Faith's brand of protesting isn't anarchism, but it's close, and that's why Tara asks her, every day, to keep a level head, to seek peace instead of another war.

It's 1971 and nothing has gotten better. Vietnam is burning, and Faith is a girl on fire, setting fire to flags as a sign of revolution. The ends justify the means, and Faith will burn every flag and draft card in all of New York if she has to.

She's found the mission, and there's no way in hell she's giving it up.

* * *

Tara likes to tell Faith that she saved her, all those days ago, in a seedy bar in Greenwich Village. Faith laughs and rolls her eyes and tells Tara that she's probably right, seeing how danger-prone she is. Tara always bumps her shoulder and smiles, telling Faith that _she's _the one who's danger-prone.

Tara's right about the second thing, but not the first.

If anyone was saved that day, it was Faith, not that she would ever admit it. Maybe she pulled Tara out of her shell and showed her how to walk tall without the fear learned in a broken, violent childhood, but Tara would have learned it on her own without Faith.

Tara had taught Faith what it felt like to be loved and to love someone in return, and how beautiful it made life seem. She showed Faith that she didn't have to be self-destructive and angry, and that happiness was simple and easy, even while a war raged on. Tara was patience and warmth and self-control, and Faith learned all that from her, without even realizing it.

Faith had been the one who needed saving that day, and Tara had saved her, without even meaning to.

fin.

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A/N: Reviews are always very appreciated!


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